Final Thoughts

It has been hard for top-flow coolers to gain much traction, since they have been mostly limited to a niche market where vertically-constricted builds with OC aspirations are forced to "settle" to a top-flow cooler. However, you can't argue with results, and although it didn't perform as well as the Hyper 612 PWM, which is larger, heavier, and one of the better coolers we have tested, being in the same ballpark with it says quite a bit in itself. Many top-flow coolers willingly sacrifice raw CPU cooling power for the "all-over" cooling benefit, but the GeminII S524 is still very capable for aggressive overclocking while cooling the motherboard, RAM, and other components and maintaining a lower profile. The "S-blade" fan is very quiet, the fan quality appears to be good and the new installation system is pretty good also. Overall, the GeminII S524 is a solid cooler in any light, and has bested any of the previous top-flow coolers we've previously tested.*

*This is the first top-flow cooler tested on our new testbed, however, extrapolating our comparisons between the Mine 2 on our old testbed and our new one, the GeminII S524 performed the best.